Highway Radio

Boystoy

Has anyone ever heard of “Highway Radio”? Probably not, because as yet doesn’t exist, but wouldn’t it be nice to be able to travel this country and receive continuous radio reception.

More importantly, it would be beneficial if in certain times of disasters, we could tune to Local ABC to get emergency broadcast updates on: Bushfires, Floods, Cyclones, Storm warnings, Tsunami, or what-ever

Those most likely to benefit are people who use the road as their workplace, such as Truckies, Tourist operators, Commercial travellers, and of course Grey Nomads, and Property owners.

If you can recall a few years ago, several truck drivers lost their lives in a bushfire on the Eyre Highway in W.A.
This tragedy may have been avoided if they had access to emergency broadcasts from “Highway Radio”.

We have noticed the preference of broadcasters to replace AM with FM radio for local communities. This gives better quality of reception, but we know that as travellers, we lose this signal in as little as 10km from the town.
AM on the other hand can transmit over long distances, for example from Sydney, ABC 702 can still be picked up (daytime) at Orange, some 300km west of Sydney.

As we travel on many country roads, we notice UHF repeater towers running parallel to the roads, and spaced apart about every 50km.
How difficult would it be to incorporate an AM transmitter on each tower to make “Highway Radio” a reality?

If you think this is a good Idea, please add your own ideas and send them to your local Member of Parliament, It could be a good ‘vote catcher’.

A good friend of mine back in NZ developed a terrestrial broadcast system where the one radio station could follow you around the world - the only thing that would change was advertising content which would change according to your location.

He took the concept to US where a major player in the broadcast industry showed interest - unfortunately set up costs would have been major, and investors were a little scared to put money into a new format that had no gaurantees of receiving the advertising dollars needed to survive... Also, consumers would have had to purchase digital receivers to be able to source the radios station/s.

I suppose his concept was a little like austar or foxtel, but for radio. The technology is out there - just need someone with the spare cash to get it up and running.

We hired a Hyundai SantaFe in Canada last year and the radio in that car was picking up what appeared to be a satelite radio transmission. We were driving around for several hundred kilometers in a remote area with good reception.